20.03.2003

Warmongers sabotaged

Last week at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire two Trident Ploughshares activists disabled no less than 30 vehicles which provide essential support to the US B52 bombers stationed there. Freelance writer Margaret Jones from Bristol and Quaker activist Paul Milling from Birmingham planned to stick labels onto all the vehicles to warn they had been tampered with. They carried with them bags of sugar to contaminate the fuel, grinding paste and treacle to add to the oil systems, spikes to puncture the tyres, and crowbars and hammers to damage the vehicles. They reasoned the bombers would be very closely guarded but guessed the Achilles heel might be the fleet of specialist support vehicles which are used to service, refuel and load bombs onto the aircraft. The bombers have been recently moved to the Gloucestershire base and will be used to carpet-bomb Iraq. A number of these aircraft recently took off from RAF Fairford on an exercise and were refuelled in the air over Northumberland. Margaret Jones said: "We managed to carry out our planned action very successfully. We evaded the police patrols, cut through the perimeter fence, and got into the garages, which were unguarded. We managed to disable some 30 vehicles. With our politicians out of democratic control, it is up to ordinary citizens to stop the war machine. I could not bear the thought of these bombers taking off from our country, flying thousands of miles to Iraq, and dropping their cargoes of death on ordinary people. We felt we personally had to do what we could to stop them." The spectacular disarmament action comes just three days after Trident Ploughshares activist Ulla Roder inflicted severe damage, estimated in millions of pounds, to a Tornado jet at RAF Leuchars in Fife. James Venables